Idiot
by Darikiema
Summary: Teddy McSwiney was an idiot. It wasn't wheat he jumped into and now Myrtle is atop that silo worrying about him. A fic based off the movie version of The Dressmaker.
He was an idiot.

He was drowning.

It wasn't wheat that he had jumped into; it was sourgum. He can hear Barny shouting that you can drown in sourgum. Christ, he'd told his little brother that so often that you think it would sink into his own head. He thinks he can hear Myrtle up top the silo.

Myrtle. God how he loves her. She agreed to marry him and what a lucky bastard he was for that. She prefers Tilly, but he's the only one who gets away with calling her Myrtle.

No, he knows he can't hear her, but he's sure she's figured out that something has gone wrong. He hopes she doesn't jump in after him. Then they would both die down here. And that just isn't an option.

He tries to move his arms, to find the ladder back up to freedom- to air. To Myrtle. But he's sure that he is making no progress. He can't see and the hard grains of sourgum burn his eyes and fill his mouth. The air in his lungs is tepid and foul. And the longer it sits there, the more it burns. Like an imploding pressure that feels like his chest is too full of air and has nothing left inside. Like the grain around him is crushing it out of him. He knows he can't hear her, but he's imagining how she'll scream for help. The fear and pain in her voice is enough to entice a panic in him. It hurts his chest to think of how she's terrified and probably crying. It's a pain that is so different and so much worse than the one that fills his chest and burns ragged behind his ribs. Worse than the bile and the grit in his eyes. The shit in his mouth and the terrible, blinding agony in his head. He feels the sourgum pressing in all around him- crushing his arms and his legs, his lungs- and wishes it was her sweet embrace instead.

Teddy figures, though, if he's going to die, at least he's dying to prove his love for her. For his Myrtle.

Only, he knows she won't get it. Won't understand that's why he jumped. He knows she will blame herself and wonder why she didn't _just say it_. Why she didn't tell him she was no longer cursed.

She will forever blame herself and he will have proved her right.

He feels this sudden and overwhelming burst of energy surge through him. No, he will not prove her right. He will not allow her to mourn for him and his own stupidity. He will not leave her to those people out there who will tear her apart and eat her up. He wont.

He feels the same compulsion to hold her and hear her voice that he's felt since he first laid eyes on her. When she helped them win the grand finals. He wants to be up there with her, calling him an idiot if she has to. He thinks she will.

The blackness he's surrounded in is getting heavier and he feels the darkness of unconsciousness pulling him further and further away from her. The agony in his chest is growing more and more numb. A bad sign, he knows. He just wants to breath again and he wants to be up there. With Myrtle.

If only he can find his way out of this. He wishes it were water; he'd be out of this crap in three seconds flat if it were. He knows he's been down here too long because he's getting this prickling feeling behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. Almost like a fuzzy, cotton feeling surrounding is brain.

And then he feels it. The cool of a ladder rung. He knows that's what it is because he can wrap his fingers around it and can tug; it doesn't move when he does, but he sure as hell does. He's finally found his rope, his way out to freedom. But, he's been down here too long and the energy is fading too fast. The oppressive darkness is getting too thick to peer through, even though he knows there is no light to see.

But he keeps pushing himself.

 _Have to be close to the top by now,_ he thinks.

* * *

"Where are you headed to?" the ticket master asks from the isle. Tilly turns her head from the smoke, tearing her gaze from what was once Dungatar. The wretched hell of her childhood.

"Paris," she tells him, even though she knows no train can get her there. It just seems like a more definitive way of making the man leave her be. And it seems final. To be able to say she is leaving and going so very far away that she never has to set eyes upon Australia again is cathartic.

"This train has three stop overs on its way to Melbourne," he replies, unfazed. It makes her look down to her hands and mentally calculate her route back to where she is most at home.

"Melbourne, then."

"Looks like a fire someplace," he chats idly, punching at the ticket roll.

"Yes," Tilly agrees, turning back to the scene out her window. Soon it will disappear and she will be free of them. Her curse. "Dungatar."

"Burning off rubbish were they? Looks like they overdid it," He says, curt and a little disbelieving at those he had never met. He doesn't wait for her reply, but she doesn't intend to give it to him. He leaves and she turns to her companion with a sly grin and something a little bit like freedom in her eyes.

"You never met the rubbish."

And Teddy laughs.


End file.
